The Samsung’s new Galaxy S series has launched three devices lately and the 6.7-inch Samsung Galaxy S20+ (Plus) is another addition to the family of the Android phone. It comes with a quartet of lenses along with 64-MP telephoto and 3x lossless zoom. It almost has everything covered just like the other Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra model.

The Samsung Galaxy S20+ (Plus) also has complete support for 5G, irrespective of which carrier you are using. It also has a Snapdragon 865 processor that comes with a blistering 12GB of RAM and a 120Hz refresh rate. The quad-HD AMOLED display is also there to make you feel good about it.

Is it possible that the Galaxy S20 Plus could be on our list of the best phones in 2020? You might fall for this device because the specifications and the affordable price will definitely attract you.

Price And Release Date

The starting price of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus is around $1,199, because it is now available in the market. However, with the starting price of $1,119, you’re going to get a whopping 12GB of RAM along with 128GB of storage memory as well. You can also upgrade to 512GB RAM if you’re willing to pay $150 extra.

Also, there’s an option of inserting a microSD card in all three of the Samsung S series devices and take your storage memory to almost one terabyte. The Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus is available on each of the four big U.S. networks – AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. It is also expected to make its way to discount carriers and MVNOs after some time.

Design and Colors

Samsung has moved to the center for the exponential method using the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus, just like the Galaxy Note 10, when the rear optics are placed vertically in an elongated, rectangular cabinet.

If we talk about the design then the edges of this device are not entirely curved as they were in the previous few Samsung Galaxy S series models. Nonetheless, the Samsung Galaxy S20+(Plus) is coming in rounded frame design and the camera-in-screen design will surely help you recognize that the handset is from Samsung. You will find three different colors in this device such as Cosmic Blue, Cosmic Grey and Cosmic Black.

This is perhaps not a good sign for the latest Samsung headset because the previous model such as S10 was available in a variety of bold and unique colors. You could get the iridescent Prism White to a beautiful Flamingo Pink. Also, the hues used in this device are giving a drab feeling and seems not exciting by comparison. We surely don’t know if they will look great in natural light or not.

You look at the 6.9-inch S20 Ultra and that’s a juggernaut in all of the recently launched devices. However, the 6.2-inch Galaxy S20 gives you a more compact and pleasant look despite being so large in its display. When it comes to Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus, it feels pretty normal in your hands.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus has a display of 6.37 x 2.9 x 0.3 inches and 6.56 ounces. It is clearly smaller than the iPhone 11 Pro Max that is coming with a display of 6.2 x 3.1 x 0.32 inches, 7.97 ounces. However, the display of the Apple’s largest iPhone is two-tenths of an inch smaller.

Camera Setup

The magical 108MP main camera is not available in the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus or regular S20. Clearly a setback, isn’t it? That function is only coming in the expensive Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. For those looking for inexpensive Galaxy devices, will surely miss the 10x hybrid optical ‘lossless’ zoom and 100x digital space zoom.

The features that you’re going to enjoy in the S20 Plus are the 12MP primary lens with an f/1.8 aperture and a 64MP telephoto with f/2.0 aperture cable that gives you 3x optical zoom. You’d also get the 12MP ultra-wide lens with f/2.2 aperture along with a VGA time-of-flight depth sensor. It will help you in managing live pictures and other effects as well.

You must understand one thing that the optical zoom lens is not actually a zoom lens which is generally used in a traditional manner. The S20 Plus hardly crops into the middle of the frame to get the promised 3x zoom and the focal length is also pretty much similar to that of the main camera.

This is possibly to prevent a permanent zoom-in perspective when recording video content since 8K capture is also necessary for the same 64MP sensor. Therefore, you will not hear me weeping because the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus hasn’t got a 100x zoom mode.

Although, it’s technically impressive that Samsung tugged it off on S20 Ultra, it’s almost impossible to try and maintain a constant hand while shooting at such speed. You certainly need a tripod and the fully digital zoom won’t produce the crispest shot at the distance connected with such a camera under any scenarios.

We can’t really review the overall camera result of the S20 Plus but we can safely say that despite the absence of the 108MP shooter, this device will surely give you good quality images if not great.

The count of megapixels takes you only anyway as far. In fact, Samsung’s after-processing mechanism and the software will most probably be able to say how good these cameras really are because the S20 Ultra actually blends nine pixels into one under most circumstances to generate a 12MP image.

We can also see if it pops up with the same auto-focus problems just like Galaxy S20 Ultra if more time is spent with the S20 Plus camera system. However, the Company has already promised a software fix to address that problem.

If we talk about something that we really loved about the camera system of S20 Plus then it has to be the Single Take feature. It’s a feature that provides you the opportunity to capture different kinds of media with the help of the phone’s lenses in just a single shot. Later on, you can keep the ones you prefer the most.

It is a perfect solution for all those who waste their time in taking the same picture a couple of times while also using different cameras and effects. The S20 Plus is capable of producing wide and ultra-wide shots along with a bokeh-effect Live Focus portrait and two videos at regular and high speeds. You can also share them as a GIF later on.

The S20 Plus has a 10MP camera at the front while using f/2.2 sensor just like the S20 model. You can anticipate to the forthcoming camera competition between the S20 Plus and S20 Ultra in order to know what exactly the missing part is in the inexpensive device.

Yet overall, Smartphone photographers are still looking forward to these devices and they seem excited as well.

Display

All three Galaxy phones sport AMOLED Quad-HD displays with a refresh rate of 120 Hz. Samsung has installed these 120Hz panels for the first time in its handsets whilst the one in the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus offers a 6.7-inches display corner by corner.

Almost all of the latest Smartphones are coming with a refresh rate of 60Hz and 120Hz mean that the animations shown on the screen are extremely smooth as the content being shown on the screen is getting updated twice.

The Company has also doubled the panel’s touch sampling rate to 240Hz in order to make these latest Smartphones more responsive than before. Although, the majority of games will not use the highest refresh rate in its full capacity, Samsung tells us that Forza Street is customized by Microsoft to benefit from its potential.

Otherwise, as you thumb around the one-user interface and third-party applications, you can definitely feel the difference; Android is only more immediately felt at 120 Hz. Nevertheless, there is discomfort as well because the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus makes the compromise to back up the display resolution to full HD to the native quad HD of the panel to achieve this 120-Hz animation but it will make texts and graphics a little blurry and it will be hard to translate.

You are always free to update your quad HD resolution, and then you are going to return to standard 60-Hz animations. This restriction was obviously made to restrict battery life drainage, as both resolution and refresh rate changes could decrease charge longevity.

You would feel that the trade-off is somehow disappointing because most of the Samsung phones were defaulted to full-HD resolution despite coming along with quad HD screens.

Device Performance and 5G

Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 865 processor is surely a winner in most of the handsets that are coming out as flagship devices in 2020. However, the first one to support this quality processor is the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus also offers a generous 12GB of RAM and 128GB of storage but also up to 512GB space if someone wants to upgrade through a microSD card.

It is because the Galaxy S20 Plus is fitted with the same Snapdragon 865 chipsets and 12GB RAM as the Galaxy S20 Ultra base model, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise if we see the Samsung S20 Plus with 6.7-inches display performing same as the S20 Ultra with 6.9-inches display.

In Geekbench 5’s General Performance Test — 3,076.3 for S20 Plus and 3,076.7 for S20 Ultra — the S20 Plus’ result was almost identical to the S20 Ultra.

We haven’t seen such scores by any Android device over the years in Geekbench test. However, they still couldn’t catch the 3517 score produced by the A13 Bionic-powered iPhone 11 Pro Max.

When we talk about graphics then the Samsung S20 Plus produced a result of 1319 frames that concludes to 21 frames per second in GFXBench’s Aztec Ruins Vulkan test that was taken off-screen.

The Galaxy S20 Ultra has been similar in nature to Android devices such as the Galaxy Note 10 Plus (1.058 frames) and OnePlus 7 T (1.169) well ahead last year. Nonetheless, with its 1,657 frame score (25 fps), the iPhone 11 Pro Max remains the benchmark to beat.

We are also urging you to use the Snapdragon 865 in real-world applications to improve Galaxy S20 Plus. After an impact and transfer in Adobe Rush the phone was tested by making them transcode a 4K video to 1080p.

The iPhone devices usually brisk with this test, while devices powered by Snapdragon slog it through easily and while the S20 Plus took 1 minute and 13 seconds compared to the iPhone 11 Pro Max’s 45 seconds, it is still a significant stride in terms of comparing it with the previous Galaxy Note 10 that recorded a time of 1 minute and 34 seconds. The S20 Plus was also faster than the S20 Ultra beating it by a margin of three seconds.

The Snapdragon 865 chip also gives you the luxury of using 5G data. Unlike the default Galaxy S20 that can only be connected to lower-speed, broad-coverage sub-6GHz 5G, the S20 Plus and S20 Ultra can also connect to faster, if not shorter mmWave networks.

Almost all of the major US carriers provide a slightly different 5G network mix, including low-band AT&T and T-Mobile, midband Sprint and mmWave Verizon. This ensures that you will get some 5G coverage on the S20 Plus and S20 Ultra, irrespective of the network you are using.

Battery Performance

With a large battery, Samsung has offered the Galaxy S20 Plus to keep the powerful processor, assisted monitor, and the camera lenses droning with them. The Plus version is equal with 4,500mAh to that of the battery inside the Galaxy S10 5G that was released in 2019.

It lasted 10 hours, 56 minutes on battery test, while continuously surfing the web through a 150 nit cellular link to the screen. The Galaxy S20 Plus will better match the outcome.

The S20 Plus inevitably comes to an end after lasting for 10 hours and 31 minutes with the default 60Hz refresh rate. Although, this is better than the average Smartphone, we hoped the result for S20 Plus would be 11 hours more like the S10 5G.

The web surfing through the T-Mobile’s 5G network must have brought a difference as the S10 5G tests were taken on Verizon’s network over LTE. If you allow a refresh rate of 120Hz in the S20 Plus, the battery life takes a serious strike and it can go down pretty quickly. It was tested twice and again with the refresh rate set to 120Hz. The S20 Plus took 8 hours and 55 minutes that is 90 minutes less than the time given on the 60Hz refresh rate. It happens with the S20 Ultra as well and now we know the real reason behind setting the 60Hz refresh rate as the default one in the S20 Plus.

With a powerful charger of up to 25 watts, Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus can recover fairly quickly. This was verified by our analysis. The phone battery indicator returned to 55 percent after the drained S20 Plus battery was charged with the supplied charger for 30 minutes.

Naturally, we have the same outcome with recharging an iPhone 11 Pro and Apple has an 18-watt charging-booster only. You can purchase Samsung 45 watt brick in order to go for the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus charging time, but this raises your phone’s cost by $49.

Software Performance

The new software from Samsung One UI2 revamping the interface allows you to easily hop into your favorite apps, change your settings, and much more on your Galaxy S20 phones.

It exceeds Android 10 and great new features such as smart responses, dark mode and better privacy controls. Samsung is also attempting to start Google Duo integration, to build better experience in the S20 series.

Google’s FaceTime response, the video chat app is incorporated into the phone dialer and connects to phones. Furthermore, for the first time, you can enjoy video chatting in full HD mode.

Certain software features include Music Sharing to sharing your Bluetooth connection with your car, so someone else can keep control of your music for some time and also Spotify Bixby Compatibility is there as well so that your Galaxy can recommend playlists based on your interests.

Verdict

After resisting the recent trend toward pricier flagships in large numbers, Samsung has taken care of the wind by launching the latest smartphones ever made by the S20 trio. Although you’re deprived of the 108MP main camera available in the S20 Ultra, the S20 Plus also has enough of everything else.

It is coming with a quartet of lenses, a brilliant processor with a roomy screen and comprehensive 5G support. Sometimes you feel the S20 Plus is going to be a better choice than the S20 Ultra.